Killing Your Brand Softly…

If you’ve recently bought Company A and decided to change the name of Company A, you are probably in the middle of a rebrand. It sounds simple enough, updating all sales collateral to the new brand image, developing the right message and launching a new website that merges Company A with your company.

During this rebrand, period your sales people from Company A are complaining that their sales leads have dropped. Unsure as to why this would be happening, you decide to do some research, compare Google analytics of Company A with the new website. You discover traffic patterns, which you’ll fix, but overall it doesn’t explain why sales leads have dropped.

What to do?

RE-EDUCATE YOUR AUDIENCE

What has happened is the visitors looking for Company A don’t recognize the new company name. They are looking for “Company A”.

Even if you’ve invested in Google Adwords and did an excellent job in forwarding Company A’s web pages to your new site, visitors will still need to be educated that Company’s A is now part of Company B. You’ll also need to create awareness and engagement for your Company B at the same time! And, this should happen way before the rebrand!

PEOPLE KNOW MY COMPANY

Even the largest of iconic brands continue to reinforce their brands, why shouldn’t you? You’ll need more than one newsletter announcing that Compay A is now part of Company B. After all, subscribers, clients, and followers probably have their companies to build and social network to expand.

That’s the reality in today’s marketplace. People like to say it’s competitive; I see it as busy, and as a result your brand strategy needs to be consistent, with strong follow-through in the area of promoting your new services.

Once you’ve changed your mindset, you’ll start to see that you’ll need to develop a Brand Action Plan with the objective of building sales leads to your new products or services.

That’s right; I said it. Your new products and services. It is not a rebrand any longer

You’ll be targeting the same audience from Company A under your brand name. In addition to being consistent, you’ll probably need to be aggressive. I don’t mean increasing the number of emails you send out rather you need to increase advertising, public relations, and digital marketing dollars. And, don’t forget your trade show!